Drus Griutinge - swesa namna (Danapr-?)

[ualarauans]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> 
wrote:
> 
> > Ana Danaprais staþam (et passim) "on the banks of the Dniepr" – 
it's
> > after ON Danparstaðir, isn't it? *Danaprs as I can gather is 
thought
> > to be an –i-stem fem. Jordanes used Danaper masc. and one time
> > Danaprum neutr. (Get. 30: magnumque illud Danaprum Taurumque
> > montem..., if illud is not a typo for illum acc. masc. here). The
> > formation is probably the same as in Danaster /-trum. In ON a re-
> > distribution (Neuverteilung) of morphemes took place and the 
final
> > –r- of the stem became a flective ending, hence Danpr, gen. 
Danpar.
> > Cf. also later Slavic forms: ORuss. DnEpru > Russ. Dnepr, Ukr.
> > Dnipro  - all masc. All this leads me to think that Gothic had a
> > form like *Danaprus M.-u or *Danaprs M.-a/-i, in which case gen.
> > would be *Danapraus or *Danapris. BTW., are you sure that it was
> > staþa "banks", not stadeis "places" (as in ON). Ana Danapraus
> > stadim? Or better as a compound *Danaprustadeis/-staþa?
> 
> Atlakviða, stanza 5 'ok staði Danpar' points to Go. stadeis, but 'á
> Danparstöðum' of Hervarar saga could be either.  In one version 
this
> is the name of the district, with Árheimar being the citadel, in
> another version Árheimar is the district, 'á Danparstöðum' the 
citadel
> -- so perhaps it was already unclear to compilers of the saga.  G.
> Turville Petre notes in his edition of Hervarar saga, p. 83 "the 
word
> probably means 'on the banks of the Dnjepr".  I guessed at 
*Danaprs,
> fi., since river names are typically feminine in Old Norse -- 
assuming
> that this was an ancient Germanic trend; also because of the noun
> 'ahva'.  Are there tendencies regarding the gender of river names 
in
> Latin that Jordanes might have been following, or breaking with?
> Thomas Czarnecki reconstructed *Donawi for Danube (fi.?).  I'll 
look
> into this though.  Are there any more rivers mentioned in the 
Gothic
> Bible fragments besides Iaurdanus ahva?  Any Gothic river names 
that
> have survived in Eastern Europe?

I've tried to make a little investigation of rivernames by Jordanes, 
without claims to completeness (there must be professional studies 
of this subject), and I found that in cases where there had been no 
classical tradition he uses mostly feminine names. Examples: Get. 30 
Uagosolam F. acc. sg.; Get. 33 Tisia F., but ibid. Flutausis M.; 
Get. 35 (also 96) Uiscla F. (clearly from a Gothic source, alongside 
classical Uistula); Get. 114 Marisia F., Miliare N. (?) et Gilpil 
(?) et Grisia (F.); Get. 178 Tisia Tibisiaque et Dricca (all F.). 
The last ones exactly parallel Priscus' hO TE DRHKWN LEGOMENOS KAI 
hO TIGAS (misspelled for TISAS?) KAI hO TIFHSAS in Fr. 8 – all 
masculine). Some of them are usually identified by scholars with the 
rivers known today under similar names, e.g. Tisia = Rom. Tisa, 
Hung. Tisza; Tibisia (TIFHSAS) = Rom. Timis, Hung. Temes etc. 
Marisia for Mures, Maros has been dealt with here recently.

As a side question it's worth asking if this ending –ia after –s- in 
Getica was somehow to represent [sh] heard in auslaut in Romanian 
and Hungarian names (except Tisa/Tisza), and whether it was 
Jordanes' invention or a late-Gothic scribal convention? Something 
like –sj- in Modern Dutch? When writing Gothic prose or poetry with 
the plot back in the Migration period, we'd strongly need these 
names in Gothic. Also for the reconstructed language of course, like 
in Sagkta Anna (maybe Sagktanna F.-o?) af Marisjai (Marisjos).

But back to our question. So, Jordanes feels free (and even 
seemingly prefers) to use feminine river names but he sticks with 
masculine for Dnieper (and Dniester). Is he following spoken Gothic 
here? Maybe he is and maybe he isn't. He uses classical masculine 
Danubius (and Hister) for Danube while the Gothic form was feminine 
Donawi as you've pointed out. Incidentally, you know that the latter 
was borrowed from Gothic by the Slavs, but they made a masculine 
name from it again (Dunavu)! This is probably a reason to dismiss 
Slavic evidence also for Dnieper.

But then let's recall Rígsþula where Danr and Danpr (likely 
reminiscence of Don and Dnieper) are mentioned (Rþ. 48) as two 
brother kings:
á Danr ok Danpr / dýrar hallir, / æðra óðal / en ér hafið; / þeir 
kunnu vel / kjóli at ríða, / egg at kenna, / undir rjúfa
Note this þeir – it clearly shows that they are both men. If this 
Danpr and Danpr in Danparstaðir are one and the same name (and it 
seems most probable), then in ON it's an –i- or an –u-stem noun 
masculine. Hence a Gothic reconstruction is likely (but not solely 
possible) to be *Danapr(u)s M., and, to represent or reflect (or 
provoke?) somehow the shift of the –r- into the ending in ON, we 
could go with a compound *Danaprustadeis or the like.

???

Ualarauans

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